


champagne problems

by ivyrobinson



Series: death by a thousand cuts [2]
Category: Anastasia (1997), Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:28:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28193214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/pseuds/ivyrobinson
Summary: i never was ready so i watch you go. (takes place between drew stars around your scars and death by a thousand cuts)
Relationships: Dimitri | Dmitry/Anya | Anastasia Romanov (Anastasia 1997 & Broadway)
Series: death by a thousand cuts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605637
Comments: 17
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> sorry i heard this song and it was too fitting to this universe not to use.

He’s at an antique store when he sees it. Dmitry is constantly buying old broken things for cheap to fix up, alter and resells. It’s dangerous because every once and awhile (more frequently than that) Anya falls in love with something he picks up. Sometimes she’ll want it after he’s fixed and altered it but her favorite pieces are the ones he brings home as is and broken. 

Their apartment is cluttered with broken relics of the past. 

‘Not everything needs fixing, Dima,’ she’ll tell him, playing with the broken clasp of a jewelry box. 

Dmitry feels useless if he’s not working on something. 

He doesn’t usually go near the jewelry portion of the stores, and Anya’s not with him on this trip, she’s helping her sister, Maria, prepare to move to Paris in the New Year. Maybe he’s killing time or maybe it’s fate pulling him towards the section. 

It’s a sapphire ring in desperate need of cleaning and he’s picking it up and staring at it. 

They’ve never talked about their future. Not since that night in the hotel room before they discovered who she truly was and dreamed up abandoning the journey of finding her family and running away together. 

Nine years is a long time without speaking of the future but they both came from backgrounds where a future felt hopeless to begin with. Every step they took at the beginning of their relationship was impulsive and taken for granted in retrospect. 

Getting an apartment because back then Anya was far more independent and hesitant around her family. (She still feels hesitant but the type has changed.) Moving in together was not a question but an action and maybe their relationship went so fast at the beginning they needed to take the rest more slowly. 

Nine years is a long road from homeless kids with a crazy scheme to (kind of) functional adults with jobs and responsibilities but still have each other. 

They’ve never spoken about marriage, they were still so young when they first got together and so much was still happening that it never was a conversation to be had. He’s never really thought about marriage at all throughout his life, but girls like Anastasia got married, and Dmitry can’t imagine his life without Anya. 

He feels stupid for getting it, like he’s still a teenager with a dream too big and just out of reach and a foolish scheme to get it. He cleans it and fixes it while she’s at work and out with her sisters. 

There’s a weird tension that surrounds them- or maybe just him- once he buys the ring. The universe coating him with anxiety. He’s never been nervous around Anya before, but his chest feels tight and his nerves feel twisted. 

It’s temporary, he has to keep reminding himself. There’s a plan, a set date. Christmas is always a huge deal in the Romanov family and it’s a never ending affair as they prepare for their annual Christmas gala. (Not to be confused with their annual Easter celebration or annual thanksgiving or annual summer of birthdays, they have a lot of money to keep investing in celebrations.)

The fact that it’s annual and it never really changes- Dmitry knows because he’s been to about seven of them- he thinks the planning part should be easy. Anya just rolls her eyes at him whenever he says that. It’s a tentative place to be now, a tug of war with her family for who gets more of Anya and he doesn’t know how to let go without letting go of her completely. 

He doesn’t tell anyone- not Vlad, not Marfa, and he’s not sure why he feels so much anxiety about what should be a foregone conclusion. They’ve been together for nine years, they’ve grown up together. 

(Sometimes he wonders how much growing he’s actually done, when Anya’s transformation seems to have been much bigger, for obvious reasons.)

The day after the Christmas gala, the day after Christmas really, is just for the two of them. Earlier in their relationship, she woke them up hungover and haven’t slept for more than a couple hours and had them on a plane to some place warmer. They camped under the stars like they had on their way to New York. Her hand in his, and her body curled against his for the entire night. 

They didn’t have to go anywhere warm, he’d do this on the cold ground if it would make her happy. 

And Anya’s never happier than when she’s under a blanket of stars, which probably makes it ironic that they live in New York City- known famously for not being able to see the stars so clearly at night. 

It’s always a pang in his chest when he thinks about how much his father would have adored Anya, and having someone to share his celestial obsession with. 

Dmitry loves the stars a little bit more whenever he’s with her. 

The week of Christmas he’s moved it so the ring is on him. He can feel it in the pocket of his jacket like a heartbeat, constantly reminding him that it’s there. Not letting him forget that it exists and that it’s real. 

Until it isn’t. 

Until she announces she wants to go to Paris with her sister and live there and she doesn’t want to be with him anymore. (She doesn’t say those exact words but she does want to go to Paris and live there and needs this time to herself. Time to herself lately has looked more and more like time under her family.) She talks herself in circles, every word turning her more and more into a stranger and a question of how long he hasn’t known her.

He’s spent all the time wanting to move forward with her and at some point she’s gone off the tracks and left him behind. 

And now he’s left on Christmas Day with a renovated ring and an empty apartment.


	2. forever is the sweetest con

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to complete this verse in 2020 and can’t think of a better way to end it then this.

Anya doesn’t wear rings after she leaves New York, the small box she found tucked away amongst Dmitry’s stuff and the ring inside is tattooed into her eyelids. It feels like a betrayal, a choice being made to marry Dmitry. It shouldn’t feel this way, and maybe it wouldn’t have had stuck with therapy. 

She’s never been good at confronting her own demons, the cobwebs of her mind so vast and the depth of what she couldn’t remember unknown. 

She was functional and some days that felt enough. 

She feels she owes her family their dream, this image they had of the potential seven year old Anastasia had. They don’t say it out right, but she feels the pressure in every passing remark, every memory mentioned that she should have but was robbed of. 

So she feels constricted in her chest when she finds what she shouldn’t, and tries to rationalize that Dmitry is constantly bringing back antiques and fixing them and reselling them and he’s done that with jewelry before. 

But this ring feels like her, even if she has no idea what feels like her anymore. 

So she chooses her family but gives herself space, sharing a residence with Maria and their grandmother and trying to find the final version of Anastasia. The future the lost heiress would’ve had were it not so cruelly taken from them all. 

Instead, in Paris, all she finds is loneliness. 

The second time she finds the ring, it’s when unpacking boxes at her and Dmitry’s house in Virginia. Stella is small and fighting sleep to watch her parents as they move things out of boxes, getting distracted by the memories they’ve made themselves. 

She can still see the ring in her sleep, less than a minute had passed when she originally saw it but it stayed with her. 

“I can’t believe you have this,” she says, popping the box open with her thumb. “Doesn’t it feel cursed?”

Dmitry points at her, “I knew you found it before.”

Oh right, the proposal never came and they had continued to not talk about marriage between the time she found it and the time she had left for Paris. 

“Whoops,” Anya breathes and Stella lets out an inappropriate giggle, clearly not willing to help her mother out at all. “We never talk about marriage.”

Not even now, with a mortgage and a baby together. 

“When I got this,” Dmitry said, taking the box from her. “I got it because it felt like the thing I was supposed to do with a girl like you.”

“A homeless drifter?” She asks. 

“A homeless drifter heiress,” he corrects her, tapping her on the nose. “I kept it because I couldn’t imagine marrying anyone else after you were gone.”

“Dima,” she says, but she knows. There’s no one else for her either. “You’re a sentimental dreamer.”

“It’s genetics,” he responds. “I hope it passes to Stella as well.”

Stella looks up at both of them with stars in her eyes as it is and she thinks the chances are good. 

Anya wants to hold onto the hope and romanticism in the world for Stella to see as well. 

“We should get married,” she decides. There’s no fear, no desire to flee, and no anxiety of rejection. 

For once her feet feel on solid ground. 

Dmitry blinks, looking up from where he had been adjusting their daughter’s pacifier. 

“Because we have a baby?”

“No,” Anya tells him, shoving him lightly on the shoulder. “Because I want to.” 

“It’s a piece of paper,” he points out, reaching over to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “It doesn’t change anything, you’re stuck with me no matter what.”

She smiles at that, and he bends down and kisses her. “I know, I want the grand symbolism of it all. And I don’t want to have to spell two different Russian last names if I call the pediatrician after hours.”

“Practical,” he teases. “Do you want a new ring?”

“No,” she says, and she goes to take the ring out of the box but he takes from her to slip it on her finger. “This one has always felt right.”

“I always imagined I would do this more in a more romantic way,” Dmitry comments. 

Anya shrugs and hugs him and he picks her up and spins her around. “It’s not us.” 

He kisses her cheek and Stella lets out a delighted squeal, probably from the twirling. 

Anya doesn’t need or want grand romantic gestures, she just wants her heart to always feel as full as it does right now. 

And she has no doubts that’s exactly what will happen.


End file.
